


phantom

by noyabeans (snowdrops)



Series: writing with snowdrops (saso 2017) [12]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Moving On, Post-Break Up, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 12:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11578356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdrops/pseuds/noyabeans
Summary: Shirabu knows this: theoretically, all his memories of Osamu are still there, somewhere in his mind.





	phantom

**Author's Note:**

> fill for **saso 2017 bonus round 4: quotes**.  
>  original prompt is [here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/23665.html?thread=14375793#cmt14375793).
> 
> quote:  
> Some people are so good at disappearing that you start to doubt your memories that they were ever there.
> 
> \- _A Softer World_ #1248

 

> Skin cells live about two or three weeks. Sperm cells have a lifespan of about three days, but brain cells usually last an entire lifetime.

Shirabu knows this: theoretically, all his memories of Osamu are still there, somewhere in his mind. But the mind is a funny thing, and in the span of a year things he once thought he would never forget have been buried under the weight of new memories, the features on a face he once yearned to gaze upon eternally now faded.  
  
When Shirabu thinks of Osamu, he doesn’t remember much in way of anything anymore. The thought of Osamu brings to mind little more than a quiet ache in his chest, where once it would have dredged up memories of a room that echoed in its own silence, a home left abandoned by the removal of a single box of belongings.   
  
The gaps once left by Osamu’s absence have long been filled by time, the images gathering dust in the corner of his mind where they lie untouched - his mind has smoothened over the rocky fights, the nights where he would go sleepless as he argued with Osamu over the phone in the darkness of his room, replaced them with the comfortable peace of solitude that he has grown used to wearing. When he switches on his social media apps, feeds once filled with photographs from Osamu - of the two of them, uploaded at Shirabu’s own insistence - are now filled with photographs of cats from Futakuchi, memes from Terushima, and photographs of his ex-teammates.   
  
And for what it’s worth, Shirabu knows: Osamu could have been erased off the face of the earth, vanished from existence without a second word, and Shirabu would be none the wiser. It’s almost like he’s disappeared from Shirabu’s life without a trace - after all, Osamu has, and always has been, silent like that.  
  
  
  
But Shirabu also knows: no matter how much his mind might bury the memories of those three years, no matter how much he wishes that he forget them altogether, they won’t ever disappear. His mind may cloud those thoughts, might taint the moments that had once upon a time meant  _something_ , but he will never be entirely rid of them.  
  
Because his mind can fool him into forgetting Osamu’s words, blurring them beyond recognition but his mind cannot fool the way his hand sometimes stretches out, waiting for another warm solid presence to take hold, before he catches himself.  
  
Because his mind can fool him into forgetting Osamu’s face, but his mind cannot fool the way his heart sometimes pangs whenever he sees a person with hair  _that_  shade of brown walk by.  
  
Because his mind can fool him into forgetting Osamu’s scent, that which once covered his favourite jacket now washed away by detergent, but his mind cannot fool the way he sometimes finds himself burying his nose in it anyway.  
  
His mind might make a phantom of Osamu, but Shirabu knows: Osamu’s presence is still everywhere around him.   
  
All the same, some small part of him takes comfort in the knowledge that someday, somehow, even those last remnants of Osamu will stop haunting him and fade away into the deepest parts of his mind. Because memory is a funny thing, and some day the Osamu that Shirabu thinks of will no longer be the Osamu that Shirabu once held in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> first paragraph quoted from [here](https://www.livescience.com/33179-does-human-body-replace-cells-seven-years.html).
> 
> This fill was rewritten thrice so I'll eventually post the two drafts that didn't make the cut.
> 
> [tumblr (rielity)](https://rielity.tumblr.com/) | [twitter (noyabeans)](https://twitter.com/noyabeans) | [haikyuu writing journal](https://noyabeans.dreamwidth.org/)


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